


like the grey light of dawn

by allthemeadowswide



Category: When Calls the Heart (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-09 02:44:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14707634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthemeadowswide/pseuds/allthemeadowswide
Summary: The soft pre-dawn hours are still hard most days.





	like the grey light of dawn

She wakes to silence. The soft pre-dawn hours are still hard most days, unkind to her weary mind. But she’s used to it, now, and it’s not hard to convince her sticky morning eyes to remain as they are.  _Stay closed_ , she thinks. _At ease_. They like the darkness as much as the rest of her does. There are no shadows there to make her feel small.

So she stays in bed, hand shifting to the expanding curve of her belly. The skin is harder, now—almost foreign. She wonders what it feels like from the inside. Safe, probably; warm. Movement is minimal. For now, it seems, the tiny life inside her is happy to sleep a little while longer. The kicking will come later, after breakfast, and again at lunchtime if she’s even a minute late eating it. During dinner, too, with Abigail and Cody. She usually takes dinner with them these days. It’s nice she doesn’t have to eat alone, doesn’t have to cook for one. 

 _Two,_  comes the mental correction, flickering at the sides of her thoughts.

“One-and-a-little-more,” comes her own voice. The ladies in town can say she’s eating for two all they like, but she’ll never double her portion, not even for Abigail, who has been stretching herself thin to help since Carson confirmed her suspicion.

Abigail wants her to move in, has offered four times now, maybe more, and Elizabeth always says she’ll think about it, but she knows the answer already. There are too many things wrong with the idea. Babies cry and fuss and keep people awake at all hours. Abigail works from dawn to dusk and the walls are thin enough that even Cody wouldn’t manage a full night’s rest. There’s just too much on everyone’s plates to put a baby there, too. She can’t accept, and hates the part of her that doesn’t even want to. This is _her_ baby, hers and Jack’s, and the thought of sharing with anyone else makes her feel like a skittish horse—just one minor incident from bolting.

Abigail’s offer is more than generous. To agree to open up her home and heart, knowing she’ll  be giving up her time and privacy… It’s so good of her.

Too good.

Elizabeth knows she mustn’t take advantage.

And she doesn’t want to.

The dark softens, just slightly. She’s almost out of time. Turning her head from the window, she runs her fingers down the length of her stomach, over the bump and down again, then back up: a slow, continuous motion. Here, in the inky black behind her eyes, she can almost imagine it’s Jack’s hand, and that he’s looking at her the way he did the first night of their impromptu, ridiculous honeymoon. Not sweetly or tenderly, but in a way she finds difficult to describe even with all the words in her educated vocabulary.

They piled the blankets up in the back of the wagon and huddled together beneath them, laughing as they continued a discussion about additions to their future home; the game had somehow become offering up increasingly ridiculous suggestions, and as the hour grew later, their laughter gentled and turned sweet. The stars above were as bright and happy as her heart when Jack slipped an arm around her and pressed soft, warm kisses to her face, and then her neck.

 _“To keep you from freezing,”_ he said, and she felt him smile.

She couldn’t resist cooing back at him, the sarcasm obvious but not cruelly meant. _“Ooh, my hero.”_ She pretended to swoon dramatically into his arms, awkward considering their positions, but her attempt made him laugh against her skin, the feeling pleasant but ticklish enough it brought a smile to her face, too.

He pulled away, laughter fading as his fingers gently tangled in her hair. And then he just looked at her, that almost-smile still on his lips, propped up on an elbow. He looked and didn’t say a thing.

And she remembered whispering a soft, fluttering question, her cheeks warming at the expression on his face. Not sweet. Not tender. Something else; something _better_.

 _“What?”_ she asked again.

He shook his head, smile reigniting. _“Nothing,”_ he said. _“Everything. You. I’m glad you’re here_.”

And she ran with it, after that, teasing him until he admitted that she’d had a spectacular idea in coming with him to Fort Clay, but there had been something in his expression, then, that she wanted to see again but never would.

Maybe it was _knowing_. He knew her, the good and the bad: the parts she had never shown to Abigail or Rosemary; the parts Julie was sworn to secrecy about and Charles would never think of; the parts she was ashamed of and those she secretly delighted in.

It felt good to be known and she misses it now, misses the look of someone who knew all of everything and still found it in himself to love her in a million little ways—not to the moon and back, but a distance much more attainable. From cowbells to tiny hidden paintings and a hundred candles flickering in the moonlight.

God, she misses it—misses him.

But she can pretend that he’s here with her, now, touching her belly and knowing their child, too. The silly part of her mind doesn’t want him to feel left behind—left out. He can’t, of course; he’s dead. She knows this and has accepted it, but it’s still hard, sometimes, to move forward without looking back: to leave something behind that means so much to her even now. Jack is a man— _was_ a man. A good man. She won’t turn into a pillar of salt for looking over her shoulder for him, but it’s not as if one day he’ll be there again, either. She wishes the certainty made it easier to bear, but it doesn’t. It makes her breath catch and her lungs ache.

And now it makes her pretend, because there are mornings she just can’t face without imagining what it might be like if he were with her now, hand on her belly, eyes smiling down at her. Someday she’ll give these mornings up; she knows she will. A time will come when she won’t need them anymore, when their baby will quell the ache as much as it ignites it, when the light of dawn doesn’t bring tears to her eyes because it pulls her out of dreams she’d rather stay lost in.

Jack would be excited for the baby; he’d talk to it through her belly and probably teach it to be as troublesome as he was when she first met him. She wonders, suddenly, if orneriness is an inherited trait and hopes so fervently it is that her eyes start to sting.

She feels a soft movement within her, like a little jerk.

A hiccup, Abigail had explained to her before. Sometimes that happens. Not to everyone. Isn’t it cute?

It’s scary because it’s new, and everything new is different and could be a threat. She wonders if this is how things are going to be, now, for her; if she’ll spend the rest of her life overprotective of her little one because of what happened to Jack—if she’ll smother the poor child with her worries.

The mood is broken. Her hand feels like her own again.

She has to try harder, has to stop leaning on the crutch of memories. Someday, they may do more harm than good. That’s the last thing she wants; it’s the last thing Jack would have wanted, too. She has to do her best and her best means raising their child to be their own person, even if it means a few risks here and there. After all, she took a risk, didn’t she, coming all the way out here?

No regrets. Not even one.

A deep breath and then another, until her nerves feel solid and her heart is ready. She doesn’t force it; some things have to happen naturally. And it does, eyelashes fluttering as she fights to open her eyes. The light sifts in, a soft grey dawn. It will be a gentle day today. She turns toward the window and watches the shadows stir, curtains whispering against the wall. There is another awkward jerking hiccup from her belly, and this time she finds she is able to smile over it.

“Are you hungry?” she asks softly, rubbing over the spot where she can feel part of the baby’s outline. “What sounds good? Eggs? Maybe some fresh bread?”

There is no response, but someday there will be. Someday, she thinks, this tiny lump in her stomach will be a wildly energetic five-year-old with incredible breakfast opinions.

A ten-year-old with a million questions about a dad they’ll only know through her.

A fifteen-year-old who thinks they’re grown enough to face the world alone.

A twenty-year-old who will try it, just as she had.

It’s hard to picture right now, but it must be so. She was a baby once, herself, and now she’s having one of her own. She wonders what her parents think of that and knows her father still remembers the version of her that stood on his feet to dance with him around his large study just to hear her laugh. She finds, for just a moment, she misses how it felt to be that small, that safe.

She resolves to dance with her child, too, since Jack can’t be here for it. It’s a nice image in her head, though fuzzy yet. Whose eyes will the baby have? Whose nose? Her stubborn chin-lift? His laugh? She hopes it will surprise her in a sweet way, hopes that when she sees or hears or experiences it, it will make her heart swell with pleasant affection and memory, and that it won’t hurt too much. She wants to remember, but she doesn’t want to hurt, not anymore. She’s had enough of hurting.

Is that selfish, too?

She dresses silently, eyes on her changing shape in the mirror—something else she wishes Jack could be here for. She wonders if he’d delight in it or tease her. Both, she thinks, and smiles again.

Nothing in the kitchen sounds good, but she nibbles on some bread anyway and wonders if maybe apple butter might improve it. A few papers are sitting at the kitchen table, leftovers from last night. She grades them and brushes the crumbs away afterward, and then, with an hour yet before school begins for the day, reconsiders Abigail’s offer with a clearer head. It’s a _good_ offer—selfless—and there are a lot of benefits to moving in with her again. Extra help with the baby, for one. Food everywhere. Chores divided between several people.

But where will she put her typewriter? Her photographs? And this house… Jack was only here for a short time, but…it means too much right now to let it go. Is this how Abigail felt when she chose to leave? How did she manage it? It’s a comfort Elizabeth can’t do without—not now. It hurts to realize, not for the first time, that she’s not as strong as Abigail is. But maybe that’s okay; maybe there’s nothing wrong with being a little weak, sometimes.

She wonders how she’ll break her decision. Gently, somehow. “I just need my private moments to be private.”

The rehearsed words don’t quite fit; she doesn’t want Abigail to feel as if she’s not welcome, not a part of Elizabeth’s Hope Valley family. She is. But this is _her child_ and she wants all those little quiet moments for herself; the midnight feedings, the restless afternoons, the twirling laps around the cramped kitchen. She wants them all with just Jack watching.

Maybe if she explains it that way, Abigail will understand. Of course she will; she always does.

Elizabeth blinks.

Abigail. She has apple butter. She can picture it being spread over a warm piece of fresh bread and has to check to make sure her mouth is closed lest she begin drooling. Oh, it suddenly sounds like the most amazing breakfast ever! And if she hurries, she’ll make it with plenty of time to spare before the school day starts.

She grabs her wrap, pulling it loosely around her shoulders, and moves toward the door, stopping out of habit, now, to look over her shoulder at the photographs spread out on her little table. She gives them all a soft smile, like the grey light of dawn, and turns back toward the door.

 _I’m doing my best, Jack_ , she thinks, and knows that for him, it’s more than enough.

**Author's Note:**

> This ended up changing thematic direction a few times, but what I settled on was a story about coping that follows the theme from the last episode of S5 about holding onto the things that mean something to you. As much as I disliked the idea of Elizabeth being pregnant at the end of this season (too cheesy), I can admit there are a lot of interesting directions the show could take it if they wanted to, especially in regards to her character. Because of this, I wanted to address Elizabeth's pregnancy and how she might feel about it half+way through (when all the women in town have hovered overmuch and tried, well-meaning, of course, to "help") and settled on a kind of selfish protectiveness that I feel is perfectly justifiable, circumstances considered.
> 
> Thank you for reading! If you have the time and energy, please feel free to let me know what you thought of the story. :)


End file.
